This week, the TWT team interviews Anya Ashouri, an SLP and AT Specialist for a Non-Public School who had questions about  identifying students in her school who are complex communicators but were not given AAC to communicate. Anya describes how she came to learn that her school needed more robust AT, the steps she took to train herself on AAC and AT, and asks Chris and Rachel for advice on getting admin and parent buy-in for robust AAC. 

Before the interview, Chris and Rachel talk about a journal article from May 2020, called “The Effects of Telepractice to Support Family Members in Modeling a Speech-Generating Device in the Home”. The article resonated with Chris and Rachel because they both had always felt that coaching family members through tele practice can lead to greater success than direct therapy alone.

Key ideas this week:

🔑 If we are building from the ground up, we should tell people what AAC is and why its important. It’s easy to overwhelm people with jargoin if they are not familiar with AAC.

🔑 Many people thing about the SETT framework to select the AT tool, but that is only one part of it. As you are having this discussion, discuss what kind of outcome you want? What else needs to change in the environment? Do we need to change the tasks?

🔑 When you visit a classroom, be conscious of how you can help all the kids, not just one student. Helping teachers with ways they can promote language development for all students is a good way to build rapport and buy-in. 

Links:

 “The Effects of Telepractice to Support Family Members in Modeling a Speech-Generating Device in the Home”. by Sarah Douglas, Elizabeth Biggs, Hedda Meadan, and Atikah Bagawan

https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/2021_AJSLP-20-00230

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